SERBIA: Early voting in Belgrade in Serbian national election.

Residents of Belgrade are going to the polls in a national election which is expected to be a tight race between hardline nationalists and pro-Western reformers. Serbs went to the polls on Sunday (January 21) in a national election expected to be a tight race between ultranationalists and pro-Western reformers. The country is still recovering from a decade of sanctions and isolation under autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, who was ousted in 2000 and died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes. The West says Serbia must now decide if it wants to reclaim its place in Europe. Opinion polls show the race is too close to call. The ultra-nationalist Radical Party and the pro-Western Democratic Party are polling about 30 percent, not enough to form a government alone. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia is in third place and seen as the kingmaker, equally likely to support either of its rivals in forming a government. About 6.6 million Serbs are entitled to vote. Polling stations close 8 p.m. (1900 GMT) and the first projections of the result are expected before midnight. The new government faces having to implement more painful economic changes and deal with two major international issues: the future of the breakaway Kosovo province and the handover of top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic. The United Nations is expected to rule this year on the fate of Kosovo. The West favours granting independence to its majority ethnic Albanians as they have demanded since 1999, when NATO bombs drove out Serb forces accused of killing civilians while fighting an insurgency. The major parties say they will not accept the loss of Kosovo, but the Democratic Party of President Boris Tadic -- the party favoured by the West -- has come closest to telling Serbs that it might be inevitable. Brussels froze talks on closer ties last year and said it would restart them only when Mladic, accused of genocide, was on trial. Some Western officials accuse hardline nationalists in Serbia's military and police of helping Mladic to hide and evade trial by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The Democratic Party says arresting him is a top priority. The Radicals, who consider Mladic a hero, are unlikely to deliver him.

ITN Source | January 21, 2007

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